Waking a month old baby to feed

[porpentine]

I posted here a couple of weeks ago when my son was losing weight and got some really good advice, so I was hoping for a bit more...

Basically he was slow to regain his birth weight (at one point actually losing weight), and had been sleeping longish hours at night, so the HV said to wake him 3 hourly for feeds at night. Have been doing this and after a week he had more than regained his birth weight and put on another 200g the following week, when he appeared to wake approx 3.5-2.5 hourly for feeding.

Last night he slept longer and I woke him after 4.5 hours to feed, should I have done? If he does it again, can I just leave him and is there a cut-off point past which I shouldn't let him sleep?

Thoughts greatly appreciated.

If he is gaining steadily, has plenty of wet/dirty nappies and is alert in the daytime between naps I personally would let him sleep. This may be coloured by my own four month regression hell though.

Glad things are better for you both, OP :)

This is a tricky one - he is gaining weight wonderfully well and clearly transferring milk. In those cases, you can usually leave the baby to let you know when to feed. In your case, there was a difficult start and you have only been on a good road for a couple of weeks. So it looks like you did the right thing last night, I would say. A 4-5 hour gap should be fine :) A baby aged just a month rarely sleeps longer than that without there being a problem of some sort....a few do though !

I agree - if he's gaining weight and you don't need to worry about his intake don't wake him up. Waking a sleeping baby when you don't have to? Madness!

How much does he feed in the day? Is there scope to feed more often then and leave the longer stretch at night?

If you have been advised by a HV to wake him because he is not gaining weight you should do so. There may be other medical issues going on that we don't know about.

If she's not feeding well it may be that she is not able to suck properly. A baby that's weak is unable to wake itself to feed, and unable to suck properly during the day and that's not a good combination. I think you should see the doctor.

Sorry if I'm sounding alarmist - but it happened to me.

He feeds at least every 2hours in the day and often more like 1-1.5. Waking him after 4-5 hours at night makes sense I think, particularly as you say tiktok we've just got back on our feet, and we'll see what's up at the next weigh-in.. 5 hours does seem about the max for a baby of this age anyway.

horse we certainly were having problems a fortnight ago and I absolutely agree that waking him as directed was the right thing to do. Since then as I said he's been gaining weight well, and I had the impression that once birthweight was regained waking to feed was less of an issue. At the time of the original problem I did take him to the GP, who said he was fine, and in all other respects he's been very healthy, extremely alert and aware in the day etc.